


Memories

by TyrantChimera



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: Gen, Horror, Mind Games, Post DoC, Well - Freeform, because i had to, it was a one-sentence horror story prompt, or so my muse convinced me, well sort of horror, which then i had to expand on because
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24808765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TyrantChimera/pseuds/TyrantChimera
Summary: Cloud remembered defeating Sephiroth many times, defeating him once and for all, yet as the man smiled sweetly at him once more, Cloud recalled just how fallible his memories could be.  Oneshot, Tumblr prompt.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	Memories

Cloud remembered defeating Sephiroth many times. He remembered the struggles of blade and blood, the sacrifices he and his friends had made. The heartbreak and the triumph whenever the son of the Calamity was bested.

He remembered defeating Sephiroth,defeating him once and for all. The first time, that chaotic, brutal moment when his opponent's body was smashed against the side of a mako reactor, electrified, and dropped into the caustic liquid below. The second time, when he and his friends sent him to the lifestream, when Cloud himself had to follow and when Omnislash's dance of blades left the man slowly falling, fading, as if everything were no more then the end of a bad dream. The third time, when the nightmare reincarnate came once again, smiling as disease riddled Cloud's body, when Cloud's final blows left black feathers falling like cherry blossoms in a spring breeze, and the boy Sephiroth had possessed struggled in vain against the death that followed.

Cloud remembered each and every time he'd defeated Sephiroth, once and for all.

Yet there he was. Standing casually, face and lips tilted as if meeting an age old friend and not a mortal foe. Standing, speaking sweet nothings that dripped like honey and poison, slowly, sluggishly oozing from his lips like sugary promises to a lover discarded. Words twisted from his benevolent grin with love-hate-possession-mocking, enticing Cloud to truth and lies. “It's good to see you again, Cloud. I missed you, you know.”

“You can't just stay a memory, can you? I'd rather forget you.”

The two of them are still, Cloud trying to stare him down, to challenge the green-eyed man to admit defeat, to back off before they repeat their age-old song and dance, but as always Sephiroth's eyes hold nothing more than greed and superiority as he looks down at Cloud with the fondness of an adult patronizing a guileless child. “So cold, Cloud. A memory can be missed, and can miss you in return. But then again, we are nothing but our memories. Even our perception of reality is remembered. When we perceive reality, we only know we do so, because we remember it. Perhaps I am just a memory. But then, by that logic, aren't we all?”

As the man smiled sweetly at him once more, Cloud recalled just how fallible his memories could be. 

Cloud opens his mouth to retort, grips First Tsurugi with the intent to bear it, but Sephiroth reaches forwards and catches him completely off guard. Not because he has reached out to Cloud, no. Because he has reached out, and his hand has found something between them.

He taps on the glass.

-Feeding time. That's our chance!-

Cloud takes a step back, shaking his head. Muddled memories come forth, the mako tank, the trek across the world, flashes of reality. When Sephiroth's mind brushed with his own, controlled him, when Sephiroth's slitted gaze caught his in its inescapable grasp. Green, green, so very green. Or was that the green of mako between them? It hurts, his mind hurts.

Sephiroth just smiles once more.

Cloud's reality is breaking down. His skull feels like it's splitting, his breathes feel thick and sluggish as if he'd never left the tank below Nibelheim all those years ago. Oozing mako burns his lungs, his veins, his past tears through his mind in rips and shreds that are going to fast for him to recall more than the faintest impressions.

“My living legacy-”

“Stay in my memories-”

“Can sins be forgiven-”

“Cloud!”

“I will never be a memory-”

It hurts. It's confusing. He tries to find Sephiroth before him, but he cannot perceive reality. He can't see where he was when they met this time around, in the middle of Midgar's ruins. He can only see starbursts of recollections, the life of him and his friends through the mako haze, and through all that, a pair of slitted pupils and neon green eyes, hungrily watching him. There's green, green, so much green. It's just like he's back in Mideel with his mako poisoning, back with Zack as his best friend dragged him to the broken promise of safety. Back in a mako tank, where all he had were his rapidly deteriorating memories as reality faded into the flow of the lifestream.

The Mako tank. Green, Green. So much green. Did he ever actually leave it? Was he still in that tank, imagining everything? Was his reality nothing more than a mental escape?

“When we perceive reality, we only know we do so, because we remember it.”

And then it was over. He was back in the middle of Midgar, winds howling through the ruins like a dirge through the bones of a skeleton. The air was cool and dry. Dust tickled his throat, the sun blinking in his eyes as he adjusted back to reality.

There was no Sephiroth.

Cloud looked down to where the man had paced, seeing nothing but dirt and a few half-dead blades of grass. No tracks, no trace. The empty skies echoes in his ears. The world was devoid of anything but him. Cloud looked around in confusion, because suddenly, everything that had happened, had been imagined. It takes him a full five minutes for his breathing to return to normal. Another five for him to calm enough to return First Tsurugi to the harness at his back. There had been nothing here, after all. Nothing but the gusts wailing through the dead remains of a power company's fallen might, the occasional scratching through dirt of a bird or rat or monster, and the sound of himself as he heavily sighed. Nothing was there. Nothing had happened. It had just been a hallucination. Just-

“Just a memory.”

Cloud whips around at the sound of Sephiroth's voice, flinching at the sensation of fingers down the side of his face. The pressure of a hand on his shoulder, holding him like a favoured pet. But there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

There was nothing at all, and Cloud was alone.

Cloud Strife resolved to talk to someone. Immediately. Perhaps Tifa, or Reeve, or anyone. He didn't know what this was. A relapse, a hallucination, a memory gone wild, or just a dream. He kicked at a stone on the ground. It bounced and clattered, and he reassured himself that this, this right here, was reality. This was reality, and he was going to stay there as best as he could. He was going to get help this time, not run away like he had with the Geostigma disease. Cloud turns around, mission to survey the ruins after the fall of Omega all but forgotten. This is more important. He makes a fist, as if to remind himself of his own strength. Remind himself that he's beaten Sephiroth's mental attacks before, fought back the insanity. Maybe this isn't even Sephiroth, just some memories that won't leave him alone. Regardless. He's done this before. He hadn't lost it entirely back then, and he wasn't about to start now. He throws his hand to the side and marches back home.

He tries very hard to ignore it when he feels, for a moment, the faint sensation of his fingers slipping against the glass interior of a mako tank.


End file.
